It's hard to imagine the Liverpool band guitarists with a Fender Stratocaster on their neck. The iconography wants the Fab 4 between Hofner, Rickenbacker and Gretsch, yet John and George have always been weak for the Californians guitars, and in some of their greatest songs they hide behind a Strat.
George Harrison had always wanted a Stratocaster in the late 1950s and 1960s, after seeing Buddy Holly on the cover of Chirping Crickets. George recounted his naked attempts at school desks to draw the shape of the affectionate Stratocaster, which at times was far too expensive for little Harrison, who ended up buying a Czechoslovakian copy, Futurama Resonet, in Franck Hessy's store in Liverpool, With a £ 10 deposit on November 20, 1959.
To see a Stratocaster in the hands of Beatles you will have to wait until February 1965, when the two first mythical Sonic Blue were bought.
Even the anecdote of the purchase is worthy of note, in fact Brian Epstein offered himself to pay the two new tools personally, provided the roadie Mal Evans had to find two twins guitars, of the same color.
The serial number on Harrison's Sonic is 83840 and is dated December 1961, so in February 1965 the two instruments had to be two ex-demos, or two new guitars arriving in England at the end of 1962 and remained uninvited in the store.
The first Beatles song in which they used the Stratocaster is "Ticket to ride", played by John (George plays Rickenbacker 360-12). Harrison also used his "Yes it is".
In "Nowhere man" they both use it, in unison in the owl! They used the two AC30-connected Stratocasters facing each other with a single microphone in the middle to create an "analog" stereo effect that remains imprinted.
Certainly, Rubber Soul is the first record in which the Stratocaster plays a protagonist role in the Beatles sound, but George used it very much in the Revolver sessions and reappears in the following years.
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